Unproven Theories

12/07/2009

I descend from a number of early Quakers who lived in what would become Durham, New Hampshire. The entire area, at the time, was Dover, and then referred to as Oyster River Parish. This part of the New Hampshire wilderness in the late 17th century was attacked by Native Americans on numerous occasions. Many people were killed and others were taken to Canada. Some of the captives sometimes were ransomed back to New England, whereas others, mostly women, remained and married into French Canadian families. This background is necessary to understand because of the lack of records for this area in that time period. Some records were destroyed or lost in the attacks. Some records don't exist because being a Quaker in N.H. at that time, although possible, was still technically illegal because up to 1692 (and for a while thereafter), New Hampshire was ostensibly part of Massachusetts. In modern terms, the Quakers were on the down low.

I think there are two Deliverance Clarks I have to untangle. I descend from John Runnels and his first wife, Hannah Clark. I wrote about this couple in my article, New Hampshire and Maine Descendants of William Reynolds of Cape Porpoise, New Hampshire Genealogical Record 25 (2008): 145-162. Deliverance Hanson wrote a will dated 1 July 1766 and proved on 5 April 1773, in which she mentions her "cousin" Remembrance Clark, brothers James and Eli Clark, sister Mary Osborne, children of her sister Sarah Osborne, deceased, and children of her sister Hannah Renels (sic) deceased. This seems to be a complete family picture of this Clark family. Deliverance notes deceased siblings as well as those alive, so there is no reason to believe she left out anyone. We have marriage dates for all these siblings which we can use to date this family. James married 16 January 1718 at Dover [NHGR 2:126] to Sarah Leighton; Eli was married before July 1719 to Elizabeth Huckins [N.H. Provincial Probate 32:95]; Mary married 10 June 1717 at Salem to Samuel Osborne, Jr. [Salem VRs 4:145]; Sarah married at Salem also on 30 August 1705 to Samuel Osborne [Salem VRs 4:145]; and lastly Hannah married at Durham to John Runnels on 23 December 1718 [NEHGR 23:179].

Assuming the standard age of men at marriage of 25 and women at 22, birth years would be: James, b. 1693, Eli, b. 1694; Mary b. 1695, Sarah, b. 1683, and Hannah b. 1696. Deliverance, the writer of the will, seems to be married by 1714, and is probably b. ca. 1690 herself [making her 76 when writing her will and 83 or so when she died]. This fits nicely together. Here's the problem: supposedly these are all children of an Abraham Clark who is the [blank] Clark killed in a 1694 raid. Well, that's not much of a problem. You can certainly push some of the births back and fit in everyone nicely.

What you can't do is make Deliverance (Clark) Hanson, the wife of Nathaniel Lamos, which The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire does (pp. 143, 409). Nathaniel, son of Edward of Ipswich, Massachusetts, was born about 1650. If you investigate him carefully, he has but two children: Nathaniel, b. ca. 1700 and Elizabeth b. 1698. Therefore, the mother of these children must be born 1678 or earlier. Nathaniel is alive in August 1713 when he deposed as being 60 years old, but was dead by 1721. Deliverance is a Hanson when she witnessed a deed in 1714. So, the presumption is a girl born say 1678, marries a man, 28 years her senior when but 19, has two children by him, he dies and within a year she remarries. Then she writes a will when 90 or more mentioning all her siblings, but not her two children, one of which lived nearby? I don't think so.

A Deliverance Clark is said to have been a creditor to the estate of Thomas Drew in 1694 (again GDMNH, but there is no primary evidence for this in New Hampshire Provincial Probate Papers). It seems more likely (to me) that the wife of Nathaniel Lamos was also the wife of Abraham Clark who was killed in 1694. She is born say 1658 and has the six Clark children between 1680 and 1694. She then marries secondly Nathaniel Lamos and has two more children. This leaves her daughter Deliverance Clark free to just marry Joseph Hanson and have no children and write the above-referenced will.

There is much going on here. There are just enough records left to paint a sketchy picture, but not enough to bring the picture into focus. In addition to the above-named people, we have at least these other unconnected characters: Abraham Clark, the carpenter who was born about 1679 (deposed aged 59 in 1738) who is connected via land transactions. He is the right age to be an older sibling of these Clarks, but since not mentioned in the will of Deliverance, doesn't seem to be. He is possibly a cousin or do I actually have a case where someone was not mentioned in a will? [It should be noted that her cousin Remembrance is actually her nephew, son of James. This is proven by a deed dated 13 November 1767]. Also one Mary Clark married Bartholomew Stevenson on 10 October 1680 at Durham. She would be the same generation as Abraham Clark the 1694 victim. She names a son Abraham.

One avenue of research I shall attempt is the Friend's records for Salem, Mass. where the two Clark sisters go to marry the Osborne brothers. Perhaps upon entering the meeting there they gave some information as to their identities.

11/29/2009

How many examples do you need to prove that something in the 17th century was possible? was commonplace? One of the all-my-ancestors books I indexed was by Joan Guilford, Ph.D. It came out in two volumes, the first in 1990, which was reviewed in The American Genealogist in 1993 (Vol. 68), p. 58-60, by the editor David Greene, also a Ph.D. Guilford renewed the claim that John Rugg of Lancaster married successively two daughters of John Prescott. Donald Lines Jacobus, in his treatment of the Prescott family years ago, refuted this by noting that there was a ban on such marriages since they were considered incest in the Old Testament reading of Exodus sense. When the second volume of Guilford's work came out in 2003, she shot back with six examples of such marriages. Greene reviewed volume two in 2004 (TAG 79:320) and renewed his objections. In any case, I thought I would explore this problem. Five of these couple have not been researched in the last 25 years by anyone but Guilford. The sixth was researched and disproves her theory.

The six examples given by Guilford are split over three colonies: Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The Massachusetts examples are the aforementioned John Rugg and then William Cleaves. These two are easily refuted. Greene in his second review notes that Williams Cleaves first wife was recently proven to be Martha Edwards not Martha Corey, something Guilford had missed (NEHGR 155:225-226). The Rugg/Prescott fails (IMHO) because John Prescott leaves a will which doesn't name a daughter Hannah (the supposed second sister to marry John Rugg). I'm inclined to believe that in Massachusetts it was indeed illegal to marry successive siblings.

Meanwhile in Rhode Island, it seemed to be legal, albeit not encouraged. The two examples given by Guilford were Jane Burlingame who married successively John Potter and his brother Edward, and Amos Westcott who married Sarah and then Deborah Stafford. Rhode Island started over theological disagreements within Massachusetts, so I'm not surprised they may not have upheld this Old Testament statute. I have not yet pursued further research into these two examples.

The last two Guilford-supplied examples are from Connecticut: Samuel Beebe of New London married Agnes then Mary Keeney, and Joseph Wright of Weathersfield married Mary then Mercy Stoddard. I will be exploring and researching these last two examples more fully in the upcoming weeks.

Preliminary research shows that there is no primary evidence for either of these two claims. Wethersfield Vital Records (p. 310) show Joseph Wright m. Mary [blank] on 10 December 1663. Mary, wife of Joseph, d. 23 August 1683, age 37. Then Joseph Wright m. Mercy [blank] on 10 March 1685. The children of John and Mary (Foote) Stoddard are known from his probate papers. [Mainwaring, Early Connecticut Probate Records 1635-1700, p. 241-42]. On 20 December 1664, the children of John Stoddard were Mary, age 21, John, 19, Josiah, 16, Mercy, 12, Elizabeth, 8, and Nathaniel, 4. This agrees with Weathersfield VRs, p. 253, Mary, d. John and Mary Stoddard b. 12 March 1643. Mercy's birth is not recorded.

So, despite the fact that Joseph was married to Mary a year before the probate of John Stoddard, Mary is not listed with her married name. Moving past that, the marriage records for Joseph Wright give no maiden names to his wives. Mary (Foote) Stoddard, remarried twice thereafter to William Goodrich then Thomas Tracey. She left no probate. I will need to go to Hartford to research Weathersfield Land Records to see if an answer lies therein.

The Beebe/Keeney question also needs intensive land research since there are no Beebe-Keeney marriages in the New London Vital Records, nor did William Keeney leave any probate papers. I'm intrigued to see what can be really learned of these two examples. By the way, these are now only 4 possible examples out of the 37,000 marriages in Torrey's. I'm with Jacobus that this was not customary in the least.

11/23/2009

There are several good clues I’ve been collecting to provide
a springboard for finding the English origins of the Rev. Samuel Arnold, the
third minister of Marshfield, Massachusetts.Samuel Arnold appears first at Sandwich, Mass. in 1643 on
the list of men able to bear arms between the ages of 16 and 60. [Shurtleff,
Records of Plymouth Colony, p. 192.] He married sometime in 1648 an Elizabeth
(---) for the birth of his first child is recorded at Yarmouth on 9 May 1649.
[Shurtleff, p. 9] Samuel is recorded as a freeman at Yarmouth [Shurtleff, p.
200], but also at Marshfield as Mr. Samuel Arnold [Shurtleff, p. 201].These freeman records were recorded
well after the fact in 1658. He may have been in Scituate in 1657 when he
witnessed a deed for Thomas Byrd on 20 March 1657/8 [Bangs, Scituate Town
Records, p. 155].However, he was
in Marshfield shortly thereafter and was its minister until his death
[Richards, History of Marshield, Vol. 1, p. 93].He leads the list of freeman in Marshfield in 1689
[Shurtleff, p. 207].Samuel died
on 1 September 1693 [Marshfield VRs, p. 17].He left a will, dated 19 August 1693 and proved on 18
October 1693, in which he mentions his wife Elizabeth, sons Samuel and Seth,
grandchildren Elizabeth and Isaac Holmes, daughter Elizabeth's children, and
gives books to both his son Samuel [who was also a minister] and the Rev.
Rowland Cotton. [Plymouth County Probate 1:176]

In July 1680, Samuel Arnold, Senior, aged about 58 years,
deposed in a court case between John Cotton of Plymouth and Ralph Powell of
Marshfield.[(SJC docket
#1915)].This gives an approximate
birth year of 1622, which works well with the above-cited records.He was 21 in 1643 and about 26 when he
married.Also, Ichabod Wiswell
printed a broadside entitled: Upon the death of
that reverend and aged man of God, Mr. Samuel Arnold, Pastor of the church at
Marshfield, : who deceased in the 71st year of his age, and of his ministry the
36th, September 1. 1693.Again, the age at death agrees with his
deposition. This elegy which includes Arnold's own memoir type poem, gives no clues to his origins other than "old England," and that he was a fisherman before he was a minister. I'm not sure that helps.

The second clue is the presence in New England of his
brother, John Arnold, a mason who died before 16 May 1661 at Boston, Mass.This John was in Boston by 1639 and
admitted to the church as a single man on 22 February 1643.He was made a freeman on 16 May
1643.John’s probate is granted
“to Samuel Arnold, his brother” and “said Samuel Arnold of Marshfield in
Plymouth jurisdiction,” deposed on the land owned by his brother John on 31
July 1661. [Suffolk County Wills, pp. 192-93, originally abstracted in the
NEHGR].Since John was known to be
in New England first (at least in the extant records) and was made a freeman
first, it seems he was the elder of the two brothers.

So, the search is for a Samuel Arnold born about 1622 with
an older brother named John.Using
the IGI for parish extractions there are two possibilities.It should be noted that not all parish
records are searchable in the IGI, so these are the only two that readily
appear and the true origins may lie elsewhere.However, at Coventry, Warwickshire at the Church of the Holy
Trinity we find a Samuel baptized on 31 May 1622, son of John and a John baptized
on 14 June 1614, son of John. [FHL Film #1067410].The other choice is in Mickleham, Surrey, where a Samuel is
baptized on 6 July 1623, son of William and a John is baptized in February
1619/[20?], son of William.

Sadly, I cannot locate the definitive marriages of either
possible father nor their wills.Surrey probate is indexed completely in all jurisdictions up to
1650.No William Arnold appears
past the year 1615.Two William
Arnolds marry in Surrey: On 16 June 1614, William Arnold married Audrey Start
at Mitcham andanother at Chertsey
on 29 July 1619 to Alice Browne.I’ve yet to hack through Warwickshire probate.Only one John Arnold appears to marry there in 1600 and is
unlikely.More potential marriages
appear in Boyd’s Marriage Index.

Samuel Arnold has only three known children: Samuel,
Elizabeth, and Seth, the first two of which are ostensibly named for their
parents.So onamastics are not
helpful here.Clearly we will need
a will that names either Samuel, John or both as being in New England.

11/18/2009

Married Thomas Stack on 27 June 1846 at St. Malachi's in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada

Aged 39 in the 1860 U.S. Census taken on 26 June 1860. (b. 1821)

Aged 47 in the 1870 U.S. Census taken on 7 June 1870. (b. 1823)

Aged 60 in the 1880 U.S. Census taken on 19 June 1880. (b. 1820)

Aged about 75 at death (January 1888) in newspaper [this refers to her and her husband]. (b. 1813)

Burial record as age 67 8 January 1888 from St. Hyacinth's Church (b. 1821)

Gravestone gives 1820 as birth date at St. Hyacinth's Cemetery.

There is no civil death certificate. Her parents are not named in any document. Her birth place is always listed as Ireland. Thomas Stack listed his birth place as County Cork in his naturalization application. She had six children: John A., Mary Ann, Thomas F., Ellen, Elizabeth Jane, and David William, born between 1847 and 1860.

A search for baptisms of Abigail Cody in the IFHF Database for all counties available, yields only six hits (out of 7,675,533 records). That seems to me that Abigail Cody is an uncommon name. Those six hits are all in County Cork: two in 1815, one in 1821, one in 1826 and two more in 1844 and 1856. These last two we can of course dismiss. Of the four in play (1815, 1815, 1821, 1826), 1821 seems the most likely, based on her given ages in records she left. That baptismal father's name is David, a name she uses for her own son. Using the IFHF Database again, only one marriage record (out of 3.8 million) that appears for an Abigail Cody (in 1840 in Cork, which is probably one of the 1815 baptisms).

And that's my reasoning thus far. It would be great to find more about her proposed parents and siblings and see if there is anything that names her as Abby Stack.

11/09/2009

There's a great clue in
the Richard Walker sketch in The Great Migration 1620-1633, III:1910, that led me
to look this up. The deed in question, Middlesex County Deeds 7:83, “Capt. Richard
Walker of Reading and Sarah my wife and Lt. Thomas Marshall of the same and
Rebeckah my wife for 30 pounds sold to Francis Smith, 500 acres of upland and
meadow in Reading, bounded on the southwest by common lands of Malden; on the
southeast by the common lands of Boston, on the east lands of Richard Rowten
of Lynn and north by the little river and lands of Thomas Clarke and Lt. Thomas
Marshall.The deed is dated 29
September 1646; affirmed by witnesses on first day 9 mo. 1654 and recorded on 9
April 1679.

There is a book at NEHGS, The Beginning of Reading &
Lynnfield, Massachusetts by Loea Parker
Howard (1937), which lists the land grants made to the citizens of Lynn in 1639
that became Reading.This list is
from the Essex Court Records and appears in Volume II: 270.Only three men were granted lots that
were 500 acres.

Thomas
Willis whose land was given to his son-in-law the Rev. John Knowles who
then sold it to Isaac Hart.See NEHGR 30:463.

Now, the question becomes, was Edward Howell of Lynn and
then Southampton, NY, the father of Sarah Walker and Rebecca Marshall?Edward was born in 1584 and his first
known marriage to Frances Paxton was in 1616.He was 32 and could easily have had a wife previous to
that.If married ca. 1609 he could have had two daughters born in the early 1610s to be the wives of those two
men.

The administration of the estate of Edward Howell was
granted on 6 October 1655.That’s
awfully close to the date of the affirmation of the above deed [within a year].Edward doesn’t use the names Sarah and
Rebecca with his other known children, but sadly, neither Richard Walker nor
Thomas Marshall name a son Edward (or better Howell). Is this new and exciting information or just a wild goose chase?

11/04/2009

WILLIAM
BARSHAM of Watertown, Massachusetts.His parentage remains
unknown.Best research
remains: Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins;
Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 (NEHGS, Boston, 1995)
1:108-111.BOGUS LINE: parents given as William Barsham and Ann
Yelverton, she the daughter of Henry and Bridget (Drury) Yelverton (see
PA3, p. 791 for this last couple).See http://homepage.mac.com/billwesco/WC05/WC05_126.HTML.A google search of Barsham andYelverton
brings up over 2,000 hits.

GILES
CROMWELL of Newbury and Salem,
Massachusetts.His first
marriage record from Eling, Hampshire, England reads: Giles Cromwell, of
Southton (sic for Southampton), miller m. Alice Weeks of Eling, spinster.
[Hampshire Marriage Licences 1607-1640 by Church of England Diocese of
Winchester by Arthur James Willis (1960), p. 68].His parentage is unknown and he is
certainly not the son of Sir Oliver Cromwell, uncle to the Lord
Protector.Knights do not
have sons who are millers.

JOHN
DRAKE of Windsor, CT.John Drake’s parentage remains
unknown but he clearly hails from Arden, England, where he marries in
1616.Best research is:unpublished material by Douglas
Richardson; TAG 65 (1990):87—8 and TAG 63 (1988):193-206.For years confused with another
John Drake, the son of William Drake and Philippa Dennys.

WILLIAM
DUDLEY of Guildford,
Connecticut.See The
English Origins of William Dudley of Guilford, Connecticut, The
American Genealogist 82 (2007):63-75. BOGUS LINE:parents generally given as David and Joanne (Arnold) Dudley,
grandfather as a Thomas Dudley with various ties to the baronial
Dudley/Sutton family.Example: http://www.geocities.com/bjcarrington/dudley.html.

EDWARD
GRISWOLD of Killingworth,
Connecticut.His parentage is
given as George and Dousabel (Leigh) Griswold, but nothing further is
known.Best research: The
Griswold Family: The first Five Generations in America by
Esther G. French and Robert L. French (Griswold Family Association,
Wethersfield, CT); and Mary Walton Ferris, Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines (n.p. 1931, 1943).

VINCENT
MEIGS of Killingworth, Connecticut,
whose parentage remains unknown, but certainly hails from in or about
Chardstock, Dorset, England where he married about 1609.Best research is: http://www.meigs.org/ and Search for
the Passengers of the Mary & John 1630 Vol. 25, p.
47-8.See the aforementioned
webpage for the BOGUS LINE.Father given as Lawrence
Meigs/Meggs, son of Nicholas and Jane (Peverel) Meggs.Lawrence’s wife is given as Anne
Woods, a descendant of the St. Leger family.

GEORGE
MORTON of Plymouth,
Massachusetts.Parentage
uncertain.See: Dictionary
of American Biography ed. by Dumas Malone (Scribner's, New
York, 1932) Vol. 13:254; The Scott Genealogy by Mary Lovering Holman (1919); Robert Charles Anderson, The
Great Migration Begins; Immigrants to New England 1620-1633(NEHGS, Boston, 1995) 2:1296-7; The Ancestry of Eva Belle
Kempton 1878-1908: Part I, The Ancestry of Warren Francis Kempton
1817-1879 by Dean Crawford Smith
(Boston, NEHGS, 1996); and The Ancestry of Thomas Chalmers
Brainerd by Thomas C. Brainerd; edited
by Donald Lines Jacobus (Montreal, 1948).BOGUS LINE:Father or grandfather given as Anthony Morton whose
wife is Mary Plumpton.Anthony Morton’s mother is given asMarkham and there are various ties to the Constable,
Wentworth and Skipwith families.See http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~pmcbride/rfc/gw55.htm
among other places.

THOMAS
ROBERTS of Dover, New Hampshire.The son of John Roberts of
Wollaston, England, but his wife and his mother’s identities uncertain and
unproven.Any link to the
Hilton family is complete conjecture at present.Best research: Genealogical Dictionary of ME and NH
by Sybil Noyes, Charles Thornton Libby, and Walter Goodwin Davis
(Portland, 1939, reprinted Baltimore, 1988).

Deborah named a boy Benajah, which is a rare name. Using the Great Migration Project [immigrants 1620-1633 and 1634-35, surnames A-S], there are only four families that use that name in New England. The Titcombs in Ipswich, Mass.; the Holcombes in Windsor, Conn., and the Dunhams and Pratts in Plymouth, Mass. To put that in perspective, about 40% of the 20,000 immigrants of the Great Migration arrived in or before 1635, or about 8,000 people. Of those we find the use of Benajah but four times. I actually emailed Robert C. Anderson and he said that there about 2,200 sketches done so far, of which but four use that name, and he called Benajah a unique and diagnostic name.

The Dunhams and the Pratts were related by marriage. Benajah Pratt married Persis Dunham at Plymouth on 29 November 1655 [MD 8:17], she the sister of Benajah Dunham. Benajah Pratt was the son of Joshua and Bathsheba (---) Pratt. The double use of Joshua and Benajah as names for her eldest and next sons, seems to indicate that Deborah was also a daughter of Joshua and Bathsheba Pratt.

There are no birth records for the children of Joshua Pratt. He died between 29 June 1652 and 5 October 1656 when administration on his estate was granted. He left no will. His four known children are identified by their marriage records in conjuncture with the process of elimination that they weren't children of Phineas Pratt (whose eight children are gleaned by court records showing his heirs [MD 4:138]). They are (with estimated birth dates): Benajah b. 1630; Hannah b. 1632; Jonathan b. 1637; and Bathsheba b. 1639 [Joshua and Phineas are well profiled in The Great Migration 1620-1633 III:1510-1518]. Since there is no complete listing of his children, there remains a good possibility there were others. Deborah's estimated birth of ca. 1642 fits well into this list.

The widow Bathsheba (---) Pratt married secondly at Plymouth, John Doggett on 29 August 1667 [MD 8:31]. She moved with him to Martha's Vineyard, where she was still living on 4 June 1673 after his death. Bathsheba remained a widow from 1656 to 1667. Why? She was raising her remaining children. Her two last children to marry would have been Jonathan on 2 November 1664 and presumably Deborah who married about the same time. No probate papers are extant for Bathsheba (--) (Pratt) Doggett.

Not only is using the name Benajah rare, but its timing is indicative of a relationship. Benajah Barrows died at Attleborough on 5 January 1754 "in his 71st yr." [Attleborough VRs, p. 632]. That means he was born ca. 1682. Benajah Pratt died 17 March 1682. [Plymouth Church Records, p. 249] The inventory for his estate is dated 6 May 1682 [Plymouth Colony Wills 4:2:12-13]. It seems that Benajah Barrows was named in his honor.

Jonathan Pratt removed to Taunton before 1689/90 and Hannah (Pratt) Spooner removed to Dartmouth, both in Bristol County where Deborah would move with her second husband. Lastly, Robert Barrows, the eldest son of John Barrows by his first unknown wife, married as his second wife, Lydia Dunham ca. 1684. She was the niece of Persis (Dunham) Pratt.

Based on the preponderance of this evidence, I find it most compelling to identify Deborah as the daughter of Joshua Pratt. Perhaps this theory together with the new facts that she died a Buckland will push other researchers to explore this route.

09/26/2009

I was glancing at my copy of New England Marriages Prior to 1700 by Clarence Almon Torrey (the reprint, 1992) and on p. 121 I noticed under my ancestor Thomas Burnham who married Lydia Pengry (daughter of Moses and Lydia (Clements) Pengry) on 13 February 1665/6 at Ipswich, Mass. [Vital Records of Ipswich, Massachusetts to the end of the Year 1849 (Essex Institute, Salem, MA, 1910), II:73], that he "was the nephew of Robert Allen." This was completely new news to me.

Luckily I live in Boston so I went to the NEHGS Library where the original Torrey in all of its splendor resides. Clarence Torrey hand wrote notes for every marriage in New England prior to 1700 and his work, some eleven volumes is a must-use for New England genealogy. I looked up Thomas Burnham and certainly it says "nephew of Robert Allen" and gave the cite: Allen (1890) 20. This generally means there was an Allen genealogy published in 1890 and the relationship is noted on p. 20. Since Torrey worked at the NEHGS, he exclusively used that collection and whatever he cited is generally on the shelves. Not this time. In fact, in the listing of works cited there appears an ominous note: Allen (1890) not identified.

So what to do? I assume he meant Robert Allyn who was in Salem to 1651 before moving to New London and then Norwich, Conn. However, there is also a Robert Allen in Kittery in the 17th century. Since Robert Allyn died prior to 1683, the relationship of uncle must be in a document prior to that. And the relationship must come through his wife Sarah (---). Thomas Burnham was the son of Thomas and Mary (Lawrence) Burnham and his wife Lydia is noted above. No Allens. We can further pare this down. Mary Lawrence had no siblings named Sarah. See: Mary Walton Ferris, Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines vol. 1 (1943) and vol. 2 (1931); The Genealogist 10 (1989):3-30; and The Great Migration Immigrants to New England 1634-5 by Robert Charles Anderson, (Boston, MA, NEHGS, 2005) Volume IV. Lydia Clements had a sister Sarah, but she married Abraham Morrill and Thomas Mudgett. Robert Clements left a very explicit will [Essex County Probate #5604] See: Ancestry of Charles Stinson Pillsbury & John Sargent Pillsbury by Mary Lovering Holman (2 vols., 1938) and Ancestors and Descendants of Robert Clements by P.W. Clement (1927). It seems unlikely that Sarah would be a Burnham since Robert Andrews mentions his kinsmen, John, Robert, and Thomas Burnham, in his will of 1 March 1643/4 (Essex County Probate 1:27-28]. Surely if Sarah were also a sibling and living in Salem, she would have been grouped in as well. That leaves Moses Pengry, whose origins are unknown as a possible brother. Moses was born ca. 1610 and deposed with his age eight times in Essex Court records.

Robert Allyn appears in Donald Lines Jacobus's work The Granberry Family and Allied Families (1945), but doesn't mention this relationship. So, we have a mystery. One man who live in Ipswich was possibly called nephew by a man who lived in Salem, New London, and Norwich. What type of record was it? A deed? A court case? The Essex court cases are published to 1686, three years more than Allyn lived. A mystery.